Passionate About W The 19th Knesset has a record number of female members — and they are pursuing a feminist agenda. by MICHELE CHABIN
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t was March 12, 2013 — Rosh Hodesh Nissan — and the Women of the Wall, a group of female activists who are demanding the right to pray from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, with prayer shawls and phylacteries if their members wish, were holding their monthly prayer service at the Kotel. Anat Hoffman, WOW’s chairwoman, feared the police would once again arrest members of her group, as they had every month during the previous six months. That didn’t happen. Stav Shaffir (Labor), Michal Rozin (Meretz) and Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) — three young, liberal female Knesset Members — accepted WOW’s invitation to pray with the group. Although secular, they willingly draped the distinctive,
brightly colored prayer shawls designed for WOW supporters around their shoulders. The presence of the lawmakers apparently made someone high up in the police department reconsider plans to once again detain or arrest some of the 300 women who had come to pray with the group. Instead, the officers formed a human barrier along the divider that separates the men’s section of the Wall from the women’s section to prevent religious extremists from attacking the group. For the first time in a long time, WOW’s prayers proceeded without incident. “The image of Knesset Members wearing our talitot [prayer shawls] is a symbol of legitimization,” Hoffman
said, explaining why, in her opinion, the police backed off that month. “It’s saying, ‘We’re with you.’ ” At the end of the prayer service, MK Shafir, who walked out of the Kotel plaza with her arms locked, civil rights style, with the other MKs, said she participated in WOW’s prayers “because I believe in their struggle. I believe in the right to express one’s religious beliefs in the way that feels right for them.” When, a month later, the police again started to detain WOW activists, In solidarity with the Women of the Wall, MKs Stav Shaffir (center) and Tamar Zandberg (right) pray with WOW chairwoman Anat Hoffman (left) during the group's monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer service. Courtesy, Women of the Wall
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Na’amat Woman
FALL 2013